As one of core initiatives to increase participation in the Commonwealth Games year, we are launching a new pay & play platform for bowls, called PlayBowls.
This will be a mobile-friendly website, enabling newcomers to the game to book & pay clubs for rink time.
This will help our sport become much more accessible to a potentially large and growing audience of people who want to play bowls casually and will be searching for online recreational activity. The platform would make it easy for clubs to evolve and manage the demand from this casual audience.
So what will this do for bowls?
- Provide the sport with a destination to signpost new participants.
- Give clubs a valuable new service and open up a new revenue stream for them, in the same way golf clubs generate membership fees and green fees. Clubs would benefit from secondary spend on equipment hire or refreshments and have a market of potential future members.
- Start evolving the membership model of our sport, which is currently unsustainable.
- Provide data of this new audience, which can help us promote new opportunities to people who try the game.
This new platform is under production and will be ready ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
We are encouraging clubs to attend one of our introductory webinars to learn more about PlayBowls and how it can benefit your club.